


Older Bones, Colder Heart

by nuclearmuffins



Series: The Caster's Canticle [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alistair/Surana is so minor you have to squint, Angst, Don't Judge Me, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, How Do I Tag, I Tried, Loss of children, Warden (Dragon Age) Backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 00:32:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18399497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuclearmuffins/pseuds/nuclearmuffins
Summary: Orsino's thoughts on the daughter he lost.Originally written for a prompt on r/dragonage.





	Older Bones, Colder Heart

He knows he has no right to call her his daughter, or himself her father. The only time he’d ever been a father to her was begging the Templars to give him five more minutes with her before they took her away for good, off to some alienage orphanage in Ostwick or Denerim where he’d never get to see her again. He’d lost more than just her that day, but her mother, too. By revealing himself as the father of her child, they deemed it unsuitable for Helaine to remain in the same Circle, and so the next day, they told her to pack up for the long trip to Montsimmard.

They’d taken precautions not to let him know until she’d already left. And so, he had been all alone in the Gallows once more, left with only a snatch of a baby’s cry still ringing in his mind.

He’d already had to harden himself when Maud had killed herself in front of him, but that day he’d asked the Maker to help him take out his heart of flesh and replace it with a heart of stone. As his bones aged, the more he became resigned to it all. Every apprentice he’d lost in the Harrowing. Every enchanter unable to take another day in the Gallows. Every single time a mage’s blood coated a Templar’s blade. They all became bricks for the wall he slowly built up against everything he’d seen.

Somehow, news about her always seemed to shatter through his barriers.

It was snatches, at first, of Kinloch Hold’s prodigy healer, First Enchanter Irving’s best student. Stories of her incredible talent, how deftly she worked ice and storm magic, how she could make an injury appear as if it had never been there in the first place. It had started off sounding like an unsubtle boast, but more and more Enchanters had verified Irving’s claim through the years. Kinloch had a true genius within its walls.  

His initial thought was that it might not have even been her. The surname Surana, the only thing he’d been allowed to give to her, was not uncommon in the slightest. He’d never heard the name _Aliena_ before Helaine had shouted it at the Templars, but it was a name not too far from the word “alienage”; perhaps some uncreative Templars had just neglected to think of any better name for an entirely different elf girl. But slowly he’d let himself think this might have been his daughter, the same red-faced infant he’d watched being carried away by the Templars. It had been more out of a quiet, desperate hope at first… but the truth had made itself apparent the first time he’d ever seen her all grown up.

He thought the last he’d ever see of her would be as a squealing lump in a blanket he’d already felt some strange, wonderful affection for, but the year he’d been made First Enchanter he had visited Kinloch – for research-related purposes, but the thought of her had always lingered in the back of his mind, ever-ready to occupy it utterly at a whim. It was just a glimpse of her, talking with another of Irving’s students, her back turned to him and completely unaware of his presence. But then she turned her head for just a second, her face caught in a moment of laughter, and suddenly all he could think of was _Helaine, Helaine, Helaine._ A mass of soot-dark hair like a cape down her back (his own had been a muddled brown before it went grey), eyebrows high and thin, a small and delicate-seeming frame. (That was definitely his nose, though. His unfortunate nose.) He wanted to say something so desperately, just to choke out _any_ word to her, but the words caught in his throat and tangled before he could even get a sound out. So, he had watched her leave again, just as helplessly as the first time he watched her being taken from him.

He’d heard of the “Jowan incident” that had spread like wildfire in the Circle and an oddly parental worry had exploded inside him for her new life in the Wardens, just at the same time he had elatedly breathed “she got away, she got away.” Then the stories about how she had liberated Ferelden’s Circle tower from a horde of abominations, and even later of her Storm of the Century and the slaying of the Archdemon, and suddenly he was overcome by an overwhelming sense of pride he’s not even sure he’s allowed to have for his daughter. His little girl.

So now when she looks him in the eye and says in the most placidly polite tone he’s ever heard, “I am pleased to meet you, First Enchanter,” he knows she has no idea how much it feels like she’s reached into his chest and yanked out his heart.

He has to feel a jolt of furious pride at her brazenness, for coming down here to the Gallows, arm-in-arm with the King of Ferelden, right under Meredith’s nose. Likely the most politically powerful mage in southern Thedas, breezing into a city where Templars held nearly all control, only barely held back by him and the city’s mage Champion. But seeing her again, nearly all the features so starkly a mirror to her mother’s, it all makes him think again of what would have happened if he’d gone through with the mad idea he’d had when he first found out Helaine was with child. If they’d ran as fast as they could away from it all, away from the Templars, from the Circle, from the clank of invisible chains around their ankles, they might have been a _family_. He could have spent two decades listening to the sound of her voice calling her father, instead of him being a complete stranger to her.

But perhaps it was fate that he had to give her up. If he had given her the life of a runaway apostate, what would she be now? Certainly not hailed as the Hero of Ferelden, nor as titled as she was - Lady Chancellor of Ferelden, Arlessa of Amaranthine, Warden-Commander of Ferelden. No. He couldn’t have done that to her. But it feels no less like a stab watching her leave, thinking of everything he could have said but never did to her.

One of his senior enchanters walked up to him, a furrow in her brow as she watched his expression. “Orsino, are you alright? Is something the matter?”

His voice unexpectedly came out a hoarse scratch, like a scrape against his throat. “No. No, it’s nothing, Catrin.”

As he turned to leave, to return to his monotonous life fending away Meredith, he caught one last glimpse of her, the sunlight caught in her hair, a peaceful smile as she talked to her king. She was happy. His daughter was happy, and that was all that he could ask.

Even if he never saw her again.

**Author's Note:**

> ...I only have a little shame about Orsino Surana. The Helaine mentioned as Aliena's mother is meant to be Commander Helaine, the teacher for the Knight-Enchanter specialization in DAI. 
> 
> I would just like to say that this is partially the Discord's fault, but mostly mine.


End file.
